


Catalyst, why do you exist?

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Primordia (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Thanatos Virus end, so uh Horatio can pick up Crispin and Clarity no matter the end, this fic isn't about that however, which can get creepy depending on what you pick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25276735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which the weary snap and everything else takes the brunt of it
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Catalyst, why do you exist?

Horatio sits for a long time truly. Metromind doesn’t care, it’s the truth that this is only a fraction of her power.  
The hazy sun dips into the horizon by the time he makes up his mind. Or rather; Horus has spent the past hours fiddling with scrap and assembling small devices out of it wrestling with his own conviction.  
He was made for death and he chose mercy but the he that stands is not the he which chose it. He runs a hand over Clarity’s head and a delicate thumb over Crispin’s remains. He is made for death but he chose to spare, to give mercy and a tyrant took it away. A tyrant trapped under her own crumbling hubris. He’s hardly the last hope for the city when a sentient factory sleeps beneath her. He wants to scoff at her plea.  
He wants to give in, be part of a whole to be used and useful.

The Horus who was whole would have spared them. He thinks he might like to fly and he tries to remember the feeling of mercy. Repair it from crashed dregs. He looks at the power core thinks of detonation and then forces himself out the door, intending for one last look at the sky.  
Clarity’s head takes up  
a whole pocket, one of the largest two external ones. It knocks gently against scaffolding when he climbs until he finds he can keep going up with only one leg and two hands. He curls the spare and tilts his body away from the tower so it won’t get dented. Crispin’s drive is tucked in a pocket he added to the lining of his coat, a tiny thing, narrow zipper opening hidden under a lapel fold. It’s hard to find if you know it’s there, near impossible if you don’t.

Crispin hadn’t shown mercy and neither had Clarity but Horatio always would have, wouldn’t he?  
He reaches the spire and Scraper ascends quickly after, one clawed hand still ready to fire on him again. Strange that a tool meant for melting bedrock hadn’t killed him the first time he thinks, Crispin’s pocket just left of the impact mark. Strange that the three of them are manbuilt.  
Perpetual smog begins to pool thick enough to see again round the city streets in the night chill. Amber and blue haze below eat the elegant human architecture and Horatio thinks of Ever-faith suddenly, strangely.  
His company had found the Dune’s rough enough to kill, but he’d made the journey to and back from this city mostly intact, and survives now three steps from a bomb. He’s barely two and a half steps removed from what they worship but he doesn’t know that. Horatio didn’t even know he was just one life, five versions away. He was so close, so close to Man. He would have known them in his first life. Horus lost those memories, Metromind has done her level best to purge their legacy from existence, leaving both pathogenic ignorance and her alone with the real accounts. The luckiest, like Clarity only knew secondhand stories. Everyone else was gone.

He’d chosen mercy, Horatio exists because of Horus’ mercy. He’d uprooted his core logic and killed program majority version. For nothing, all for nothing. If he’d attacked then the humans might have lived, the city had been well fortified the legion sent had been largely lost. They could have survived without their AI, could have rebuilt their technology immune to his virus. The tyrant gloats at him. Horatio fiddles with Thanatos and the other scrap his bag. The sun is setting on the skyscrapers when he brushes against the radio transmitter. Inspiration sparks, he blindly slots the decrypted chip into the reader.

Horus-turning-Horatio version one had been kind. Horatio had tried to be kind, he thinks all of Horatio has always tried to be kind. Horatio-turning-Horus version two needs to be something else entirely. Who he was has been mad before, who he was has been stubborn in every good and wrong way there was to be.  
Perpetual smog begins to pool thick enough to see again round the city streets in the night chill. Amber and blue haze below eat the elegant human architecture and Horatio thinks of Ever-faith suddenly, strangely. His company had found the dune’s rough enough to kill, but he’d made the journey to and back from the city mostly intact, and survives three steps from a bomb. He’s barely two and a half steps removed from what they worship but he doesn’t know that. Horatio didn’t even know he was just one life, five versions away. He was so close, so close to Man. He would have known them in his first life. Horus lost those memories, Metromind has done her level best to purge their legacy from existence, leaving both pathogenic ignorance and her alone with the real accounts. The luckiest, like Clarity only knew secondhand stories. Everyone else was gone.

The transmitter slides into his hand awkward like a gun, he knows how to hold one build one load one aim fire disassemble improve reintegrate and modify now. It fits into his hand against the course polyweave glove and carefully crafted metal palm comfortably as penance.

He’d come up here to think, for one last view of the sky. If he tilts his head up, waiting here higher than he can ever remember being it’s almost like he’s flying. If he had let go while climbing, if he jumped off the edge it’d be even closer. He’d only come up here to think but the weapon he is sits curled in his hand, Metromind’s condescending speech cycling on internal loop and a radio tower looming over all. There’s no isolated network from her, Metropol’s rampant broadcast had breached even his downed fuselage in the Dunes. He supposes he could, threaten her, make a show of force and Scraper, he’s right in range after all. He could choose something kinder.  
The last time he did he lost everything, he has free will he could choose something kinder. It’s only- that’s not what he was built for.

“This ends now. Everything ends now.”

No one screams in terror or pain. No knows what’s coming. Swift and silent as poison gas a blackout creeps through the city and spills into the sand beyond. A few stars that must have actually been the city’s satellite constellations wink out. He thinks, if they were still active, if others had tuned in. If the signal reached, if they still could broadcast, then any receivers struck at the moment of transmission would have become vectors.  
The scale of the desolation stretches farther than he has ever seen. He drops the virus in the pocket opposite Clarity, checks she and Crispin haven’t left, are still there compulsively again and again. Solid ghosts still dead beside him like everyone else he could have ever known. The stars shine light pollution gone, the moon lacquers his world with a soft glow. Horus looks on the void skyline, wind tugging at his coat and stands alone.  


**Author's Note:**

> You see I meant to make fanart to show the devs, but instead I wrote this. And I doubt many if any will see this but because Primordia's fandom is tiny and they do things like look at the fanart, the odds of them seeing it are better than usual, so. Hi devs if you're here! Love the game!


End file.
